Blog de Puree

Have you ever looked at the moon or pictures of other planets to see hundreds of impact craters and wondered why Earth doesn’t look like that? Well, it sort of does. That’s right, Planet Earth is full of 170 crater holes and meteor blast sites, and counting!

An interesting article about Earth’s craters on Space.com explains that some of the main reasons we don’t see most of what planet Earth has been pelted with has to do with the shifting of tectonic plates, volcanoes, erosion and the formation of mountains.

The article goes on to explain that scientists believe that the Earth was bombarded far more in its youth when more debris was floating around during the formation of the solar system. Things have relatively settled down now. The most recent famous impact crater is Arizona’s Barringer Meteor Crater which is approximately 50,000 years old. And when compared to other craters in Earth’s history, it’s 3/4 of a mile diameter is considered rather paltry.

For more interesting information on older impact sites, including the one that is purported to have killed out the dinosaurs and many other living creatures on Earth, give the article a read. And thank goodness for the geologic process. Imaging having to commute to work around a crater that is miles wide or wondering who would buy homes built at the bottom of these behemoth holes because some contractor felt he could squeeze in a housing development at cost.